The Press: Chicago Scandal Mill

Chicago's newspapers last week were reveling in the juiciest of exposes. Broken
originally by the Sun-Times and then bannered by its competitors
as well, the scandal starred Alderman Thomas E. Keane, chairman of the
city council's powerful finance committee and friend of Mayor Richard
J. Daley. The story had all the ingredients of classic muckraking: secret
land trusts, gigantic tax breaks and windfall profits from sales of
choice public land. As the inquiries broadened, other city leaders were
implicated. The series−five months in the making−was an
example of investigative journalism at its most...